The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer

The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer is a private ritual, authored by Rudyard Kipling, in which students about to graduate from an engineering program at a university in Canada are permitted to participate. Participation may also be permitted for Canadian professional engineers and registered engineers-in-training who received training elsewhere. The ritual is administered by a body called The Corporation of the Seven Wardens. As part of the ritual each participant is conferred the Iron Ring.

The ritual traces its origins to professor H. E. T. Haultain of the University of Toronto, who believed and persuaded other members of the Engineering Institute of Canada that there needed to be a ceremony and standard of ethics developed for graduating engineers. The need was patently obvious in the light of the Quebec Bridge disasters. The ritual was created in 1922 by Rudyard Kipling at the request of Haultain, representing seven past-presidents of the Engineering Institute of Canada. The seven past-presidents were the original seven Wardens of the Corporation.

The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer has been instituted with the simple end of directing the young engineer towards a consciousness of his profession and its significance, and indicating to the older engineer his responsibilities in receiving, welcoming and supporting the young engineers in their beginnings.

An inaugural ceremony was held in the evening of 25 April 1925, at the University Club of Montreal, when the obligation was taken by six engineers, some of whom were involved with Kipling in its development. On 1 May 1925, three of these newly obligated engineers met at the University of Toronto with a number of the officers of the Engineering Alumni Association and obligated 14 of them in the Senate Chamber of the University becoming the first local chapter (referred to as a Camp) to do so. The Ritual and the conferring of the Iron Ring continues to be administered by The Corporation of the Seven Wardens Inc./Société des Sept Gardiens inc. through Camps associated with the universities granting degrees in engineering in Canada.

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